A small fan blew across the foot of the bed, ruffling the sheets. It was the only noise in the quiet, quiet room. The sheets were tented with a kind of frame so that the nurse and the home care assistants could easily check her mother’s feet and toenails for discoloration. Discoloration was one of the signs that might mean the end was at hand.
It was strange to witness her mother’s silence. Her mother had always been one to keep a conversation going. She had a quick mind and a gift for easy speech. Her father had always joked that his wife was the one who should have been the lawyer, she could wear anyone’s arguments down with sheer persistence. Her mother had been silent only when she was unhappy or angry. So that now the silence made her daughter anxious, as if something must be set right. But what?
She said aloud, “You were a good mother. I hope we made you happy.” And then, because that seemed self-centered, self-important, she said, “I hope you were happy.”
Her words dropped into the small mechanical purr of the fan. She was embarrassed to have spoken. Usually she talked about normal, everyday things, like what her children were doing, or she read the less depressing newspaper headlines aloud.
The home care aide was half an hour late, but at least she came. The daughter spent some time going over what was needed. She said she would be back later this evening, after she had fixed dinner for her husband. The aide appeared to simultaneously listen and ignore her. This was the daughter’s least favorite aide, a slow-moving woman with a belligerent air, as if anything you said to her was an occasion for offense. There was always a logical, unimpeachable reason the aide gave as to why her chores were not completed, and the daughter suspected she prowled the house snooping into things when left alone. And, although she had to be imagining it, there was something smug and knowing in the woman’s attitude, as if to say, Afraid of a little death? I see it all the time. You don’t know the first thing.
Yes, she was imagining, or projecting, all that. The woman was simply disagreeable. But she was better than nothing, and if you called the agency to complain, that was probably what you would get instead: nothing. Anyway, there would be an end to everything soon enough.
The daughter, in a hurry as always these days, drove to her own house. It was a beautiful mild evening, with the trees just now coming into full leaf and the new grass looking cool and shadowy. She took a deep breath to steady herself and fill herself with calm and make way for the tasks that would come next.
She was tired of managing, coping, arranging, bearing up well. Maybe that was what real grief did, prostrated you, rendered you incapable of being so idiotically useful.
Just as she reached the intersection of one of the downtown streets, she happened to look to one side and see a man locking the front door of an auto parts shop, closing up for the day. A tall man, thin, with iron-gray hair. She only saw him from behind for a moment, she had not seen him for more than twenty-five years, but she had no doubt who it was.
She drove on without stopping. It was the damndest thing. That someone might turn up after all this time, perhaps had been in the same place all along without you ever running into them, ever looking up at the exact right moment. And with that one glance she had the extraordinary sense that she knew all about the life he had lived in those years, how he had changed and how he had not. The damndest thing, she kept saying to herself, turning it round and round in her thoughts. There was no one else she would tell about it.
Because she had a past too, much as it might be hard for people to believe.
II. LAURA
The lilacs were in bloom and she thought it would be nice to cut some and put them at her mother’s bedside.
The daughter’s name was Laura Wise Arnold. Arnold being her married name. (And daughter still for a little while longer.) Before her marriage she had been Laura Catherine Wise and she missed the particular chime of those pretty syllables. Maybe she should go back to it. Not a legal change, just for everyday use, like writing letters. People called themselves any old thing these days. Look at Lady Gaga or Caitlyn Jenner.
Or look no further than her own daughter, who had been christened Patricia Grace and called Patti. For a time in her teenage years she announced that she wished to be known as Vera. Vera, she was happy to tell anyone who expressed an interest (and many of those who did not), meant truth. As if her parents had conspired to name her after a lie.
Eventually her daughter had dropped both Patti and Vera and settled on Grace, which was still hard for her mother to get her mind around, as well as her mouth, but at least it was some part of her name that she wasn’t throwing away.
So she might if she wished begin calling herself Laura Wise again. Her husband wouldn’t like it and would see it as some kind of hostile act. And even if he had been the kind of man who was supportive and sympathetic, the kind who tripped all over himself understanding feminism and women’s issues—and her husband was so not that kind of man—other people would wonder what you were up to. They would wonder if you were making some pitiful effort to promote your unremarkable, insignificant self. Because what were older women meant to do with themselves, besides prop up everybody else’s lives and drink too much wine at book club meetings? No one, Laura was convinced, was as invisible and as easily dismissed as the tribe of women like herself, with short gray hair and glasses.
Perhaps she ought to leave her name alone and concentrate on her hair.
She was in the habit of analyzing herself and her impulses, or, if analysis sounded too grand, in the habit of second-guessing herself. Now she wondered what wanting to change her name might mean. Some restlessness or discontent surfacing unbidden? Simple caprice?
Or more than that. Her mother was now very ill, and while there had been any number of false alarms in the past, this looked like the inevitable end. A parent’s death was a milestone. It put you in a strange territory of fear, dread, ache, bewilderment. It made you greedy to get back to your own life, and then you felt guilty because of your selfishness.
Maybe she wanted to be a child again, Laura Catherine, a child who still had a mother.
She would be spending another night at her mother’s house, as had been her habit these last two weeks. Right now she was at her own house, waiting, with lessening patience, for Gabe to get home. The hospice nurse was scheduled to visit and Laura needed to talk with her. But first she wanted to tell Gabe what had to be done with the food in the refrigerator meant for his dinner. (Her son was not home either, but he was always out late and fed himself, as far as Laura could tell, from foods that came in Styrofoam containers.) Her husband was not accustomed to making an effort in the kitchen. It was easiest to prepare things for him. Or not easiest, but one of those trade-offs and calculations you made when nothing could be done entirely well.
Finally her husband’s car pulled into the driveway. Laura’s own car was parked on the street so she wouldn’t get boxed in by his. She met him at the back door, impatient to be on her way. “Hi, there’s barbecued pork, corn bread, and salad. Put the pork in a 350-degree oven for fifteen minutes and the corn bread for five. Don’t use the microwave, you’ll just dry everything out.”
Her husband pushed past her. If he was in one of his moods, she was just as happy to be leaving. He set down his keys and took a highball glass from the cupboard, filled it with ice from the refrigerator door, and fixed his usual bourbon with a splash of water. Just to be saying something, Laura told him, “There’s extra barbecue sauce, it’s in a square plastic container.”
He drank, set the glass down again. “Why thanks for asking. In fact, my day sucked.”
“I’m sorry. What happened?”
“Sales figures came out.”
“Bad?”
“Let’s just say, toilet territory.” He took another drink. Then picked up the bourbon bottle and poured out a small portion more, what he called floating it on top.
“Well,” Laura said, calculating how much longer the hospice nurse would be at her mother’s hou
se, how much longer she could stand here without missing her entirely, “they can’t think it’s your fault. You told them they were pushing the pricing limits.”
“Has to be somebody’s fault. Might as well be mine.”
“Don’t let it be. Push back.” Gabe worked for a computer software developer as an analyst and marketer. He had begun in computer science, then made the switch to business. It was a decision that he now regretted. Laura tried her best to coax or console or suggest positive courses of action whenever it came up, which was often. But over time it had come to seem like Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit, a kind of original sin that could never be erased or remedied.
Gabe didn’t answer. By now her helpful suggestions were only made so that he would have something to ignore. And she didn’t have time to be ignored tonight. She went to him and kissed him lightly. “Oven at three-fifty,” she reminded him. “Why don’t you call me later?”
He allowed himself to be kissed, his expression ironic and knowing. He was growing round-shouldered, developing a bit of a stoop. One of those slight men who seemed to be curling up into themselves with age. Every time she noticed such things, she felt her critical eye turning toward herself. It wasn’t as if her own declining looks didn’t distress her. “Bye,” he said.
“Call me?”
“Sure.”
Laura left by the back door, started her car, and drove off. It would have been nice if he had asked her how her mother was doing.
At least the hospice nurse was still there. Laura found both her and the home health aide in the kitchen, drinking coffee. Which was not really a transgression, but annoyed her just the same. She would have liked to feel that someone else was on her side and backing her up, not turning into one more problem she’d have to manage. “How’s my mother?” she asked, and the hospice nurse said that she was about the same, and that she was just getting ready to go back in. “No, please, finish your coffee,” Laura said, not wanting any more explanations or semiapologies, and went down the hall to the sunroom.
Everything about what the hospice nurse called “the dying process” had been explained to Laura. It was all entirely natural, but understandably distressing for those not used to it. The fitful consciousness, swimming up from the surface of that state between sleep and death for brief intervals. The skin losing warmth and color. From time to time her mother opened her mouth in a way that, the nurse explained, did not indicate either a desire to speak or pain. The aides had coaxed sips of juice or broth into her, but she was losing the ability to swallow, part of the body’s breaking down. Everything possible was being done for her comfort.
Nothing could be done about dying itself.
“Hi Mom,” Laura said, sitting down and pressing her mother’s hand lightly with her own. She was aware of the nurse and the aide coming up behind her. They must have decided that the coffee was not such a good idea right now. The nurse had her paperwork to fill out and the aide made herself busy with tidying the room, and for a time the three of them were quiet as the late-afternoon sunlight lengthened and the east-facing sunroom grew shadowed.
Her mother’s eyelids fluttered and her eyes rolled back and forth behind the lids. The aide saw Laura move her chair closer, attending to this. “It doesn’t mean nothing,” the aide said. “A reflex. A muscle thing. Like when they start picking at the bedcovers.”
Laura said nothing. Who were “they”? It was no way to talk. The aide had only been here one other time and Laura already disliked her. She never seemed in a hurry to do anything.
“Everybody thinks they’re going to sit up and give a big speech and it just never happens.”
“Well, every patient is different,” the nurse said after a moment.
Laura wasn’t expecting any big final speech. But she wanted to believe that her mother was still here, in some way.
Laura had questions for the nurse about when it might be necessary to switch to the twenty-four-hour care, and the nurse said she did not think it was required at present, and that things might go on like this—that is, her mother would not die—for some unforeseen amount of time. She said again that every patient was different, as if this was a consolation. The nurse went through the availability and limitations of services as prescribed by the insurer. Laura knew all these by now. She had become fluent in the language of policies, exclusions, providers, and so forth. It was a part of her exhausting new knowledge.
The nurse suggested some respiratory therapy, comfort care, and Laura agreed that this might be helpful, and they talked about how soon this might begin. Laura liked the nurse, who was cheerful without seeming too brusque or matter-of-fact. She checked the patient’s vital signs one more time, then made ready to go.
Laura walked her to the front door, then, not wanting to go back into the sickroom while the unpleasant aide was there, took a pair of shears out to the garden and cut some of the lilacs. She gathered a reckless amount of them because what other use was there for them?
She found a vase in the pantry and arranged them, smashing the ends of the woody stems as her mother had taught her, so they would better soak up water. She carried them into the sickroom and cleared a space on the bedside table.
The aide said, “What are those for?”
“So she can smell them,” Laura said, not caring to explain herself even that much.
The aide didn’t answer, but her dismissive expression plainly said, Whatever.
Laura went back to the kitchen and was surprised when the aide followed a minute later.
“Did you want her to get a sponge bath tonight?”
“No, that can wait until morning.”
“What do you call those flowers?”
“Lilacs.”
“They do smell pretty.”
“Yes, they do.” She had begun making herself a cheese sandwich but now she stopped, waiting for the woman to leave.
“She seems like a real nice lady. Your mom.”
“Thank you.” Although how the aide might come to such a judgment about someone who neither moved nor spoke was unclear.
“Some of them turn nasty at the end. Won’t let you help them. Cuss at you. Of course they can’t help it. Their minds are gone. Be glad she’s not in that kind of state. Is your dad still alive?”
“No, he passed away.”
“I figured. So you been through this once already. That helps.”
Laura didn’t answer. How was that supposed to help anything? She felt the aide was hoping she’d share some confidence, or maybe break down sobbing, something that would make an interesting story she could relate later. She resumed making her sandwich. She was too hungry to keep waiting.
“Wish somebody gave me flowers. Well, I can dream. Ha.”
The woman’s name, Laura remembered, was Angela. She had short, slick hair dyed a profound black, and a way of squinting at you, almost leering, that might have just been nearsightedness. Laura said, “I’m going upstairs to get some sleep. Please come tell me when you’re leaving if I’m not down already.”
She waited while the woman, Angela, lingered in the doorway, seeming not to want to leave. “Did you need anything?” Laura asked her.
“Just, not to worry too much about your mom. She’s not going to have a bad time. She’s found a door and she’s working hard to unlock it.”
* * *
She, Laura, was her mother’s only daughter. Just as Laura herself had one daughter, the fluidly named Vera-Patricia-Grace. One daughter made for a certain claustrophobia, a push-pull of closeness and distance. Laura liked the idea of the Old Testament matriarchs who gathered their daughters to them for purposes of counsel or consolation. A whole tribe of daughters.
Instead, she and her mother had been their own small tribe. They occupied the female territory of the household, its daily maintenance and needs. Evelyn, her mother, was not enthusiastic about domestic matters. From time to time she announced that anyone who didn’t like whatever fish sticks or hamburger patties she
served up could fix their own dinner. But she taught Laura how to scramble eggs and to be careful pouring out hot grease, how to pair socks together and roll them into a ball, and how to iron so that she could take over the chore herself. Evelyn bought Laura’s clothes and scrutinized Laura’s image in mirrors, not unkindly but with a certain objectivity. Laura came to understand that she was neither pretty nor homely, but a serviceable in-between.
They didn’t look alike. Not really. People would see them together and say things like, “She favors you around the forehead, just a little.” Laura was dark-haired and compact, while her mother was leggy and had fair, freckled good looks. It was said that Laura took after her father, and she supposed she did, although it wasn’t any striking resemblance. She went through a phase when she wondered if she was a changeling, or adopted, which was romantic and satisfying, until some undeniable family trait, like her allergies, collapsed the whole notion.
They were mother and daughter, even if uncertainly bonded. It was not as if they had any memorable, heart-to-heart talks. (At least, trying now to recall any, Laura came up empty.) Her mother was too detached, too often absorbed in things beyond her family to make occasions out of talking. But there was an ongoing conversation between them, bits and pieces at a time, when information was conveyed or implied. Such as, Laura should not think that being a girl who got good grades would be enough for people to take her seriously. Or the more modest reach of sexual appetite in females as opposed to that of ravening, insatiable males. Her parents were, after all, old-school about many things. Laura and her brother had been born to them later in life than was usual.
Or the time when she and her mother had been watching television, some show where a pretty actress fretted about keeping her boyfriend. (It was a girl program. Her father and brother were elsewhere.) There was a series of made-up obstacles, a happy ending, a wedding. The theme music jingled. Laura was relieved at the happy ending. She was still young enough to feel anxious as to whether the shows would provide them. There was also something that stirred and teased her about romance, even a make-believe romance, as if some unreliable promise had been made to her.
A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl Page 2
